So I've had this idea for months and suddenly found the full 30 Day OTP Challenge, and sooner than you can say Raxacoricofallapatorius, I started writing this thing.
Also: I suck beyond suckage at updating, so don't expect anything frequent or regular. Sorry, sweeties. And just telling you that this is available on my Archive of Our Own account, under my penname ASpaceyWaceyDetectiveinNightVale.
Well, I'm still alive
And at night, your body is a symphony
And I'm conducting.
The Calendar, Panic! At the Disco
He isn't sure what wakes him at first. He was sleeping soundly, then a creaking noise had echoed through his motionless state. Perhaps that's it.
The Doctor shifts, mumbling nonsense under his breath and rubbing a hand over his face. Sitting up, he yawns and blinks blearily.
And nearly faints back into unconsciousness.
River Song is sitting at the foot of his bed, wearing her characteristic smirk (which he's decidedly placed in the 'naughty' category) and a white silken nightgown. Its hem barely reaches her thighs and the material falls around her in a way that has him even more discombobulated. He doesn't know how that's possible. "Hello, sweetie."
"River?" Thank Rassilon he doesn't squeak- but perhaps that's due to his voice being ragged from sleep. "What- what are you doing here?"
"Oh, I didn't have any plans after getting out of that stuffy cell of mine tonight again. And I know you get so lonely sometimes, sleeping all alone at night. . ." she murmurs. It makes him shudder. "I decided you wouldn't mind me paying you a visit. Help you with pleasant dreams." That sends a spark to his stomach, flushing. He swallows.
"What. . . exactly do you mean?" He's only wearing boxer shorts instead of pyjamas tonight, and he feels extremely exposed. He pulls the sheets up to his chest.
"Well, I really do think you're hot when you're clever, so start being clever and figure it out." River's purring the words now as she sidles up to- no, slinks towards him. He sucks in his breath and presses back against the headboard, trying to will his mind to function properly. Unfortunately, his mind is the only thing that isn't responsive to his current situation.
"R-River, I- I'm not- I'm not sure if- maybe-"
"Shh, my love," she tells him (and he doesn't understand how a person's voice can be capable of practically liquid sex; perhaps that's just River- well, yes, it has to be). She's practically sitting on top of him- she is, actually, straddling him. And she's not wearing knickers, he realises. His throat feels stuck shut.
"Don't spoil it," and her tone is simply sinful.
River kisses him softly on the corner of his mouth. She doesn't catch him full on the lips, but runs her tongue over the top one. His breath shakes. He can feel the corner of her mouth quirk up as she licks his lips over, slowly and thoroughly. His eyes have fluttered closed, his morality protesting this is wrong and not good and you need to push her away while his physicality screams an overwhelming want, and he muffles a groan when she pulls his bottom lip between her teeth and sucks on it. Her hands ghost down his arms, her fingertips lightly gracing his skin. They trace looping Gallifreyan that spells out messages to make the want even more embarrassingly obvious.
She finally deigns herself to fully kiss him. It's hot and heavy and fierce and has him moaning her name into her mouth, his hands slipping up her back into her mess of curls. She clutches him tightly. Deepens the kiss and whimpers. Her nails rake down his back and he chokes a cry muffled by her tongue on his.
They're forced to separate for air, both their breathing thick and ragged, their foreheads resting together. Her nightgown straps have fallen and the skirt is hitched up to her hips. Before he has time to think about what's really happening and why he's permitting himself to do this, she crushes their lips together once more and begins to tug his pants down. He gasps, hissing low in his throat from relief.
"River," he moans, "please-"
She looks him in the eye, grins before placing kisses down his chest and belly and teasing with teeth and tongue, and folds her lips over him; he sees stars burst behind his eyes as he yells for her, now desperate.
The Doctor wakes up.
He's dizzy. He's slick with sweat and gasping for breath, hearts beating as though he's running for his life for the countless time. He's tangled in sheets and nerves are throbbing in extremely uncomfortable places.
And he's irrevocably alone in his bedroom aboard the TARDIS, where at the other end of his ship, the Ponds sleep (or are doing other humany-wumany things), still and sound and blissfully unaware of the fact that their best friend, their sweet, bouncy, childish Doctor, is having distinctly explicit dreams about their daughter.
Shit, he thinks, sighing and closing his eyes. He lets his head fall back against the headboard and promptly winces at the jolt of pain.
He needs a shower- a cold one.
You're the Child of Gallifrey, commander of the entire cosmos when you utter a single word or snap your fingers. You're the Oncoming Bloody Storm, for God's sake, he tells himself in disgust. You're the Doctor. You're the last of the Time Lords, and Time Lords do not become sexually frustrated, especially not with mad, infuriating, devious women who happen to have the name of River Song.
Rule One flashes briefly in his mind.
"Stupid, stupid, bad and awful Doctor," he says aloud, thwacking himself in the head and scowling at the rushing, steady fall of the shower. "She's rubbing off on you in bad and awful ways, and not the way you want her to- which you are not allowed to want. Stop it."
River has kissed him twice: once after the Silence debacle, and the second during his revivation in Berlin. The first had been her ending and the second had been her beginning. He's been wondering what's in the middle; well, no, he's quite sure he knows.
He doesn't know how it will happen, or when, or where. But still, he favours guesses:
Will it happen under anticipation, or a sudden snap? Something planned or immediate, fervent need? Is it going to be some long, sensual lovemaking session between the sheets, or simply fucking on the console room floor? Maybe even in her cell in Stormcage? During one of their adventures?
The Doctor doesn't like question-y words that begin with W and never imply his cluelessness about the matter at hand, and he does hate not knowing everything at times. He knows almost everything, which usually suffices. His current musings are part of that almost, devoid of his understanding.
He growls under his breath, agitatedly running his fingers through his now-tangled and soaking dark hair. Everything about River Song is difficult. But the thing is, really, he can't keep himself away from mysteries and conundrums, and she most certainly is his own personal conundrum. Truth be told, he loves it.
He loves her.
The abrupt thought makes him swallow thickly, catching his bottom lip between his teeth. But. . . well, yes. It had been a nagging sensation, gnawing at the corners of his mind and hearts, since Amy and Rory's wedding.
"Are you married, River?"
It had grown since Demon's Run. Flourished during and after Berlin.
The Doctor loves River Song. The fantastically clever, capable, wild, beautiful enigma she is. Melody Pond who had grown up and fallen for a susceptible, flighty madman who spins the fabric of time through his fingers, lets the stars dance forever in both anarchy and harmony around his magnificent magic box.
He want to take her dancing around the stars to see her glow even brighter than they, themselves, do, he decides. Yes, he remembers River's smile so very clearly and he thinks- knows- he wants to see it again.
Affection really isn't the hard part, the Doctor muses, shutting the water off. He rakes one hand through his hair again, it being scraggly and dampened. Affection's simple. It's when you take them off to discover a new form of life or a bursting constellation and you hold their hand, kiss their forehead, hug them tightly. It's easy and careless and makes you feel warm. Just like when he had Rose Tyler- his (used to be his) lovely pink-and-yellow girl. That was simple. So was being with Donna. He'd wanted to feel nothing when he was traveling with Martha; just a distraction from the aftermath of the Battle of Canary Warf, so it hadn't counted then. He loves the Ponds, his brilliant humans, and that's easy, too.
Affection is easy. Lust is not. And when he feels both for one person, it makes it a big messy amount of mixed-up-ness in his head and hearts.
He frowns as he throws his dressing gown around his shoulders and starts for his bedroom, feeling foggy from lack of sleep (which is odd; he doesn't often sleep anyway, but he supposes after his dreaming, it's needed). He's always been rubbish at these sorts of things, has always been, and it's been centuries since he's given thought to it. River's jumpstarted that feeling. So it is safe to say he's given thought to that sort of thing with her. And, frighteningly, would act upon it if given consent.
He yawns, blinking hazily in the dim, yellow light of the TARDIS corridors, walking through them absentmindedly. Considering all the flirting, subtle touches, and the fantastically intimate kiss outside Stormcage, she did consent, more than willingly, in her past and in his future. Not yet: there at the time, so was still so young.
Surely he's no longer in danger of so many spoilers, the Doctor thinks, stepping through the doorway of his bedroom. He's mostly stuck in the middle now, balancing on a tightrope and looking down, feeling scared, wary, uneasy, for he's not sure how he'll make it across and wishing River will be there if he slips and falls.
Why does he end up being the damsel in distress so very much? It's slightly distressing for his reputation. He's the Doctor, after all.
He falls back into the rumpled sheets on his mattress, his parting thoughts putting him to sleep with pictures of honeyed curls, velvety, scarlet lips, and a fierce, meaningful love meant for he and him alone flitting across his overaged, constantly restive mind.